Jon M. Chu’s Wicked movies will include at least two original songs.
Speaking with The Messenger, Stephen Schwartz, who is providing the music for both 2024’s Wicked: Part One and 2025’s Wicked: Part Two, confirmed that the second part of the upcoming adaptation will include at least two brand-new songs that weren’t in the Broadway musical.
“There are some expansions of stuff in the first movie,” Schwart said. “The point being, the new songs were written because of the demand of the story, not, ‘Oh, let’s write a new song and stick it in just because…’ The storytelling required it, and therefore they were created — the intention was that they were organic and not imposed on the movie.”
What else do we know about the Wicked movies?
Cynthia Erivo is playing Elphaba Thropp in Universal’s upcoming Wicked movies, while Ariana Grande has been cast as Galinda Upland. The movies will also star Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Ethan Slater, Michelle Yeoh, and Bowen Yang.
“As we prepared the production over the last year, it became impossible to wrestle the story of Wicked into a single film without doing some real damage to it,” Chu previously said on Twitter regarding why Wicked was being divided into two parts. “As we tried to cut songs or trim characters, those decisions began to feel like fatal compromises to the source material that has entertained us all for so many years. We decided to give ourselves a bigger canvas and make not just one Wicked movie but two! With more space, we can tell the story of Wicked as it was meant to be told while bringing even more depth and surprise to the journeys for these beloved characters.”
Having been delayed several times because of both the COVID-19 pandemic and the Hollywood strikes, Wicked: Part One is now currently scheduled to release in United States theaters on November 27, 2024.
Wicked: Part Two follows on November 26, 2025.
